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Related PSA: many customer support chat integrations on websites today give the rep a real-time view of all input changes before you actually send anything. Th

Related PSA: many customer support chat integrations on websites today give the rep a real-time view of all input changes before you actually send anything. Think twice before pasting unknown clipboard contents, typing while angry, etc. Best, explicitly copy your finalized reply from another app and paste it into the chat. (I confirmed that first hand when a support person replied to specifics of my message while I was editing the phrasing.)

maxwelljoslyn 5y ago
I really dislike this because it violates the user's assumption that the action they are in control of, "send message," represents a hard barrier between committing and not committing to their wording. Unsavory.
hiidrew 5y ago
Can confirm that Salesforce integrated chats do this
- AlexCoventry 5y ago
  I wonder whether enterprise slack does.
- hipjiveguy 5y ago
  really? how do you know? and which "chats" ?
vosper 5y ago
> Related PSA: many customer support chat integrations on websites today give the rep a real-time view of all input changes before you actually send anything. Related Related PSA: Tools like Logrocket record full-fidelity videos of your entire session on a website. They're great for debugging. It also means you should assume that every website you use has a video of everything you did that people can scrub and search through (it's more than a video actually, it's capturing and re-rendering the DOM, network traffic etc... like I said, amazing for debugging)
- bengale 5y ago
  https://www.rrweb.io/ https://www.rrweb.io/ Is a cool open source alternative. We use it with sentry to see what causes our exceptions. Also with a lot of these tools you can configure them to redact user input so you don’t capture too much.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  How do I block this?
  - JoshuaDavid 5y ago
    Block javascript using something like NoScript (which will still let you allow javascript on specific sites you explicitly approve, but will block JS from running by default).
  - kaszanka 5y ago
    Something like ||*.logrocket.network^ ||*.logrocket.io^ ||*.lr-ingest.io^ ||*.logicanalytics.io^ in uBlock/ABP filtering rules would be a good start. Not sure what logicanalytics is exactly, but it's used on logrocket's main page. Using NoScript like the other commenter said is safer though (this won't catch on-premises deployments of logrocket and it will stop blocking it when they change the domain).
    - jspash 5y ago
      You'll want to add hotjar.com to that list. They do the same thing.
    - gorhill 5y ago
      Best to remove `*.`, otherwise your filters will match only subdomains of those domains -- unless that is really what you want to accomplish.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- devenvdev 5y ago
bcx 5y ago
Keep posting about this stuff. I can tell you this is a feature our customers often ask for, but we (https://Olark.com https://Olark.com) refuse to implement, we do lose business over this. I'd like to believe the karma for not letting any of our customers be creepy (and/or violate their customers' privacy), pays for the lost business many times over.
- contravariant 5y ago
  You guys really ought to advertise those kinds of things more. The only reason you're losing business over it is that your customer's customers aren't aware. The least you could do is post a blog post about the dark patterns you refuse to unleash on your customer's customers and why.
  - SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
    Seconded, I’d like to read a blog post about that.
- taude 5y ago
  There's companies out there who's marketing automation platforms do this by default when you use their embedded widgets.....
- treis 5y ago
  This one, IMHO, isn't that creepy. Or at least there is a legitimate purpose. It gives the agent information a few seconds quicker and those few seconds add up to real money over time.
- nnf 5y ago
  My company recommends Olark to our customers, and I wasn’t even aware of this, but knowing it makes me more comfortable. Thank you for not implementing this creepy feature.
andi999 5y ago
But what is the point. Why do you want to know e. g. if the customer is so angry that they want to haunt you in your dreams like Freddy Krueger.
shadowoflight 5y ago
I know this is probably just a me problem, but man, that makes me feel kinda bad for all the times I've angrily typed out an insult-laden chat message into customer support chats for cathartic reasons before deleting it and sending something nicer. Not entirely bad, because recording what I type without my hitting send is shady asf on the company's part, but it makes me feel bad for the human on the other end of the chat. Anyways, thanks for sharing, I'll have to keep this in mind in the future and maybe do less angry-typing-and-then-backspacing.
suzzer99 5y ago
We had a sales guy pitch exactly this when I worked at a big media corp. The big boss on the marketing side just happened to be in the room at the time, and told everyone that no one was ever to work with this company. I was impressed.
shpx 5y ago
This is how chat apps should work or have the option of working. Why make you look at an animated “…” until I’m satisfied with my message when you could be watching me write it instead? It’s closer to how conversation works and we have the bandwidth and the latency. It’s immoral because you’re lying by hiding that this is happening and not making it go both ways, so why not show users and just make it part of the UI?
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  You're reading other peoples unfinished thoughts before they've said them?!
  - imalerba 5y ago
    Wouldn't that be closer to a real spoken conversation? As long as you're told what the behaviour is, I don't see a problem. I think for short lived chats such as those support chats it would speed up things.
    - josephg 5y ago
      Yeah. The problem here is that they do it without letting you know.
- zajio1am 5y ago
  Agreed. I like the behavior of traditional unix talk, which worked like that.
- progval 5y ago
  Google Wave did this (and with nest threads)! I never tried it for serious conversations, but it was quite fun to write at the same time as 1-3 other people and see them amend their messages in real time.
  - mrehler 5y ago
    I work outside of tech, and so many of my inter-work communications would be so much better on Google Wave. Of course, certain types of staff-wide communications would be solved better by anything other than email, whether that be Slack or a different platform, but I will always resent the death of Wave for what we missed out on as a society.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
That's extremely obnoxious. I wonder if I can make uBlock Origin block this.
icefo 5y ago
Something similar applies when you're on the phone. When you're on hold, the agent can hear everything you say most of the time
- grioghar 5y ago
  100% emergency services can hear (and record) every word you say while while you’re talking to 911. Am aware of several folks going to prison from confessions when they thought they weren’t being heard.

maxwelljoslyn 5y ago

I really dislike this because it violates the user's assumption that the action they are in control of, "send message," represents a hard barrier between committing and not committing to their wording. Unsavory.

hiidrew 5y ago

Can confirm that Salesforce integrated chats do this

AlexCoventry 5y ago
I wonder whether enterprise slack does.
hipjiveguy 5y ago
really? how do you know? and which "chats" ?

vosper 5y ago

> Related PSA: many customer support chat integrations on websites today give the rep a real-time view of all input changes before you actually send anything. Related Related PSA: Tools like Logrocket record full-fidelity videos of your entire session on a website. They're great for debugging. It also means you should assume that every website you use has a video of everything you did that people can scrub and search through (it's more than a video actually, it's capturing and re-rendering the DOM, network traffic etc... like I said, amazing for debugging)

bengale 5y ago
https://www.rrweb.io/ https://www.rrweb.io/ Is a cool open source alternative. We use it with sentry to see what causes our exceptions. Also with a lot of these tools you can configure them to redact user input so you don’t capture too much.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
How do I block this?
- JoshuaDavid 5y ago
  Block javascript using something like NoScript (which will still let you allow javascript on specific sites you explicitly approve, but will block JS from running by default).
- kaszanka 5y ago
  Something like ||*.logrocket.network^ ||*.logrocket.io^ ||*.lr-ingest.io^ ||*.logicanalytics.io^ in uBlock/ABP filtering rules would be a good start. Not sure what logicanalytics is exactly, but it's used on logrocket's main page. Using NoScript like the other commenter said is safer though (this won't catch on-premises deployments of logrocket and it will stop blocking it when they change the domain).
  - jspash 5y ago
    You'll want to add hotjar.com to that list. They do the same thing.
  - gorhill 5y ago
    Best to remove `*.`, otherwise your filters will match only subdomains of those domains -- unless that is really what you want to accomplish.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
devenvdev 5y ago

bcx 5y ago

Keep posting about this stuff. I can tell you this is a feature our customers often ask for, but we (https://Olark.com https://Olark.com) refuse to implement, we do lose business over this. I'd like to believe the karma for not letting any of our customers be creepy (and/or violate their customers' privacy), pays for the lost business many times over.

contravariant 5y ago
You guys really ought to advertise those kinds of things more. The only reason you're losing business over it is that your customer's customers aren't aware. The least you could do is post a blog post about the dark patterns you refuse to unleash on your customer's customers and why.
- SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
  Seconded, I’d like to read a blog post about that.
taude 5y ago
There's companies out there who's marketing automation platforms do this by default when you use their embedded widgets.....
treis 5y ago
This one, IMHO, isn't that creepy. Or at least there is a legitimate purpose. It gives the agent information a few seconds quicker and those few seconds add up to real money over time.
nnf 5y ago
My company recommends Olark to our customers, and I wasn’t even aware of this, but knowing it makes me more comfortable. Thank you for not implementing this creepy feature.

andi999 5y ago

But what is the point. Why do you want to know e. g. if the customer is so angry that they want to haunt you in your dreams like Freddy Krueger.

shadowoflight 5y ago

I know this is probably just a me problem, but man, that makes me feel kinda bad for all the times I've angrily typed out an insult-laden chat message into customer support chats for cathartic reasons before deleting it and sending something nicer. Not entirely bad, because recording what I type without my hitting send is shady asf on the company's part, but it makes me feel bad for the human on the other end of the chat. Anyways, thanks for sharing, I'll have to keep this in mind in the future and maybe do less angry-typing-and-then-backspacing.

suzzer99 5y ago

We had a sales guy pitch exactly this when I worked at a big media corp. The big boss on the marketing side just happened to be in the room at the time, and told everyone that no one was ever to work with this company. I was impressed.

shpx 5y ago

This is how chat apps should work or have the option of working. Why make you look at an animated “…” until I’m satisfied with my message when you could be watching me write it instead? It’s closer to how conversation works and we have the bandwidth and the latency. It’s immoral because you’re lying by hiding that this is happening and not making it go both ways, so why not show users and just make it part of the UI?

formerly_proven 5y ago
You're reading other peoples unfinished thoughts before they've said them?!
- imalerba 5y ago
  Wouldn't that be closer to a real spoken conversation? As long as you're told what the behaviour is, I don't see a problem. I think for short lived chats such as those support chats it would speed up things.
  - josephg 5y ago
    Yeah. The problem here is that they do it without letting you know.
zajio1am 5y ago
Agreed. I like the behavior of traditional unix talk, which worked like that.
progval 5y ago
Google Wave did this (and with nest threads)! I never tried it for serious conversations, but it was quite fun to write at the same time as 1-3 other people and see them amend their messages in real time.
- mrehler 5y ago
  I work outside of tech, and so many of my inter-work communications would be so much better on Google Wave. Of course, certain types of staff-wide communications would be solved better by anything other than email, whether that be Slack or a different platform, but I will always resent the death of Wave for what we missed out on as a society.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

That's extremely obnoxious. I wonder if I can make uBlock Origin block this.

icefo 5y ago

Something similar applies when you're on the phone. When you're on hold, the agent can hear everything you say most of the time

grioghar 5y ago
100% emergency services can hear (and record) every word you say while while you’re talking to 911. Am aware of several folks going to prison from confessions when they thought they weren’t being heard.